Fitness Enthusiast vs. Competitive Bodybuilder

Excerpt from http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/volume-intensity-adaptation.htm

The difference between an advanced fitness enthusiast and a competitive bodybuilder is that the former exercises to be fit and strong and healthy whereas the latter trains, eats, and sleeps to compete for a living. On the one hand, the competitive bodybuilder is consumed in a routine of eating, training, and sleeping 24/7.

The competitive bodybuilder will spend five hours in the gym six days per week. She will spend eight to ten hours a day sleeping. She will spend nine to eleven hours buying, preparing, and eating meals.

The remaining hours might be spent on recording what she eats in a food log, writing her workouts down in a training journal, buying synthetic performance enhancers, and perhaps strolling down to her local massage therapist to relax her muscles to aid recovery.

The competitive bodybuilder, therefore, is one who takes training to the extreme for extreme results. On the other hand, the advanced fitness enthusiast will spend one to one and a half hours in the gym three to five days per week. He will adhere to a balanced nutrient ratio meal plan that is both proper and sane for him to follow.

He will record his workouts in a training journal from the habitual practice of knowing its value. He might take supplements to increase his fitness and/or performance for reaching short-term goals quicker. The advanced fitness enthusiast, therefore, is one who pays homage to training in moderation.

These differences are not exaggerated. The advanced fitness enthusiast represents one who trains in moderation of what an unfit person is deficient in and the competitive bodybuilder represents one who trains in excess of what is moderate.

The similarity between an advanced fitness enthusiast and competitive bodybuilder is that both possess a like frame of mind: a no-holds-barred training either adhering to volume or intensity or both.